I congratulate the Acting Leader in his role as Whip. I wish Galway the very best of luck in the All-Ireland hurling final. I know everyone in the room agrees it would be great to see Liam MacCarthy go west. Best of luck to Micheál Donoghue and the lads on Sunday. We will all be there shouting them on, if we can get a ticket.

I do not understand, in this day and age, how the Department of education sees it as inessential to have mandatory special educational needs training for all teachers as part of their practice. I cannot get my head around it. It came up in committee recently. I wrote to the Department and got a standardised response stating that every teacher who goes into mainstream and teaches children with special needs must have completed the professional master of education, PME. I understand that. There are modules in special educational needs in the PME, but there is no mandatory follow-up after that. As we all know, special educational needs involve ongoing upskilling and awareness and we are constantly figuring out more about them. We will never have enough knowledge and will be researching it for eternity. The Department's view, in my opinion, is, "Tick box - done; PME completed - you're qualified, you're perfect, off you go and teach". Teachers do not, on a mandatory basis, have to upskill after that. Consider the damage a teacher could do and the trigger that could be to a child. I want to be really clear that it is through no fault of the teacher's. It is purely because the Department does not provide training at times that are family friendly. In some cases, teachers have to travel many kilometres to the nearest training day. It does not make any sense.

I would welcome a debate in the House with the Minister on instructing Oide or some other body to carry out regular mandatory training in special educational needs for all teachers. We would do the children of Ireland a service if we did that.